Sync between devices

Role Play can keep its data folder in step with a folder on a remote, through rclone. rclone speaks to most cloud drives, SFTP, WebDAV and plain folders, so Role Play does not handle connections itself.

Set it up

1. Install rclone, and create a configuration file for your remote with rclone config --config <file>. The file must be outside the data folder, or it would be synced too. An encrypted configuration file works: give its password in the settings.
2. Open Settings → Role Play → Sync with other devices and fill in:
   • Remote and folder: an rclone remote and folder such as mydrive:dsh-roleplay. Leave it empty to keep sync off.
   • rclone configuration file: the absolute path of the file from step 1.
   • rclone program: empty looks for rclone on the PATH; give a path to use another copy.
   • Minutes between automatic syncs: 0 syncs only when you press Sync now on the Sync page.
   • Configuration password: only for an encrypted configuration file. It is kept in DSH's credential store, never in the profile's configuration, and is passed to rclone in its environment.

Use the same remote on every device.

What is synced

The data folder is split into units, and each unit is synced on its own:

Unit	What it holds
worlds/<folder>	one world
sessions/<id>	one story: its database, turns, saved states and pictures
prompts, presets, lorebooks, avatars, ui	the shared folders

While a unit syncs it is locked: nothing writes to it, and requests that read it are refused until it is done. A turn that starts meanwhile waits. A story that is being played, or whose characters are still reflecting, is skipped and tried again on the next run; one that is only finishing its records is waited for.

A world or a shared folder is synced file by file with rclone's bisync, so changes to different files on two devices both survive. A story is different: its files belong together, so it moves whole. A story that exists on only one side is copied to the other.

When both sides changed

Role Play does not merge. The Sync page shows the unit as Needs a choice:

• For a story, or for a world that was never synced on this device but exists on both sides, choose Keep this device's or Keep the remote's. The other copy is replaced.
• For a world with files that both sides changed, both copies of each file are kept side by side (name.conflict1 is this device's, name.conflict2 the remote's). Choose which to keep; the other is removed.

When a story is pulled from another device, its chat is made again from what the story's folder keeps, so the chat on this device shows every turn played elsewhere. Turns of a branch you rewound away from are not in the chat's log; swapping to them works from the saved state.

Deleting

When sync is set up, deleting a story on the Sessions page asks where:

• This device only. The remote keeps its copy and no later run brings the story back here. The Sync page lists it as Kept on the remote; Sync it again takes that back and the next run downloads the story.
• Everywhere. A deletion mark is written on the remote and the remote's copy is removed. Every other device that syncs afterwards deletes its own copy too. A story that device changed since it last synced, or never synced, is not deleted without asking: the Sync page offers Keep this copy (which removes the mark and uploads it again) or Delete it here too. A world is moved to the data folder's trash instead of being erased.

A world folder you remove by hand is never deleted for you. The next run shows it as Needs a choice: Delete everywhere, Keep on the remote (stop syncing it here) or Get it back.

If the remote cannot be reached, nothing is deleted.

Limits

• A story started before the opening was kept has no opening to rebuild its chat from: its chat is made again from its turns, under the opening "The story begins."
• World authoring, preset, lorebook and session doctor chats are not synced; they belong to the device.
• rclone keeps records per pair of paths in .sync inside the data folder, which is never synced. A very long data folder path or remote path is refused with a message.

Troubleshooting

"corrupted on transfer: sizes differ" means a file arrived with a different size than the server listed. Our files do not change on the way, so something between the device and the server rewrote the file. The usual cause is a proxy or CDN that adds a script to HTML pages (a bot-detection or analytics snippet), which hits the interface packs (ui) and anything else that contains HTML while text and image files sync fine. The error names the files. To confirm, run rclone cat <remote>:<path to the file> and look for content you did not write at the end. Then switch off response rewriting for the server (on Cloudflare: JavaScript Detections or Bot Fight Mode, or turn off the proxy for that hostname; on a reverse proxy: response body buffering and filters), reach the server directly, or wrap the remote in rclone crypt so the proxy sees only opaque names and bytes. The files on the server are intact; try the sync again once the proxy leaves them alone.